Stories
The Actor- Flash Fiction
He had always dreamed of being an actor. He imagined, he dreamed - of being an actor. The world for him, was a stage, eagerly waiting to be acted upon. What travesty!
The reality was that he was not an actor. Yet he was in many multiple ways. He was not a professional thespian, but he felt, that every living moment was acting. Pretension, but acting. Eating, but acting, crying but acting.
Why had God put acting into the blood and marrow of his bones?
Even when he walked up the lane going up to the school, he thought he was acting. Was it a figment, a narrow strip of his wayward and infantile imagination? He felt a roving camera, behind him and in front of him. It was roving, circulating, circumnavigating like a machine, taking snapshots, pictures of his inner brilliance, his acting out some of the wayward and desultory moments of life, His life.
What is reality he thought.
The acting impinges upon the real, a voice probed.
Yes you are acting.
Even when you die, you will be acting.
You are a born actor.
No he said. But, he knew it, he knew that he was acting, and the roving camera, the hidden eye got bigger and bigger.
He applied to a school of drama.
The camera stood in front of his face, stared at him.
Go! he shouted, just go!
He became a teacher, even then he acted.
He was not teaching, he was acting.
His parents died.
Is it real? he asked.
Or, are they acting?
He got married, the whole show was a theater.
Close the screen. The action is over.
The acting for thirty years is over.
Now, is reality.
I am confronted with another person, another family.
This must be real he thought.
The roving camera came back. He winced. He was dying. Not acting...
'Cut, cut, cut...' the cameraman shouted.
He had arrived, he had become an actor.
11-Oct-2012
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Ananya S Guha
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